THE NEST-EGG HATCHES OUT.
"St! Bobbs!"
The sound was at Robert's left ear. He had been dreaming of Emily
arrayed in bridal white and kneeling at his side before the altar of
joy. Uncle Benjamin in a clergyman's surplice was pronouncing a
benediction upon them. The good old custom of a nuptial kiss was about
to be observed, when the warning whisper and his prison nickname rudely
awakened him to his surroundings. The sweet vision melted into a black
reality, the wide arches of the cathedral contracting to narrow cell
walls and the loved faces of Emily and his uncle cruelly vanishing.
"Bobbs! Do you 'ear?"
"Yes!" Robert rubbed his eyes as if to restore the illusion and his
answer was slumbrously indistinct.
"Count that bell."
A distant clock was giving out two strokes faintly but with vibrations
prolonged in the silence.
"'Ear the hother coves snoozing."
The deep breathing of the convicts grew more and more audible as
Robert's senses became sharper and he sat up on his couch.
"Hi 'ear you, Bobbs. Hare you making your toilet?" inquired the
facetious cracksman.
"Yes."
"Leave your bloomin' boots be'ind as a keepsake. We haren't
pussy-footed, me hangel."
"All right, I'm ready."
"Now, take out the blocks, me boy, and 'andle with care. If they falls
on your toes they might 'urt, besides disturbin' the bloomin' deputy,
which we must be werry careful to havoid, Bobbs, out of consideration
for 'is feelings. Sh!"
A footstep was heard coming along the corridor, and the re-enforcement
of light told the prisoners that the turnkey had a lantern in his hand,
the dim gas jet at one end only sufficing to deepen the shadows in the
cells. Robert lay back on his pallet and closed his eyes till the steps
retreated. In a half-minute the turnkey would be back. He was a new man,
both Gradger and Hawkins being still on the sick list from the blows
they had received in the riot of the day before.
"St, Bobbs, hare you ready?"
"All ready."
Robert had removed six bricks and carefully muffled them in his
bedquilt, leaving an aperture not much larger than the door of a kennel.
The light came nearer and nearer and suddenly he heard the cracksman
groaning piteously. The turnkey raised his lantern, approached the cell
from which these sounds issued and peered in.
"Somebody bludgeoned yesterday," thought he. But "somebody" was standing
at the front of his cell, with his hands firmly grasping two bars. As
the turnkey stooped and brought his eyes nearer, the two bars were
wrenched out and clasped around his neck. Being a sturdy fellow, his
instinct was to struggle rather than to cry. But his struggle availed
him nothing in the surprise of the moment, with the odds of position
against him. His head was drawn down through the bars and he nuzzled a
soft substance on the cracksman's breast. Then a strange odor got
possession of his senses. He gasped, fought, gasped again, and finally
fainted away. When his writhings had ceased the cracksman removed his
lantern and laid it lightly on the floor outside.
"Climb through, Bobbs--not that way."
Robert had stood on the bed and thrust one leg through the aperture.
"Head foremost, as the little feller dives."
Robert reversed his position, and with a terrible wrenching of his
shoulders worked the upper part of his body through the opening, Dobbs
giving him loyal assistance and encouragement meanwhile. The turnkey
hanging helpless into the cracksman's cell, his body outlined against
the lantern, caused him to start back.
"Ee's hall right. Hi nursed 'im asleep on my breast-pin. Hain't it
daintily perfumed?"
Attached to the cracksman's breast was a large sponge saturated with
chloroform. The turnkey had inhaled this and was soundly asleep.
"Now for running the gantlet, Bobbs."
Dobbs' motions were lightning-like. First he laid the turnkey softly
outside, then climbed through the cell-bars, this time feet foremost,
for the cuts had been made nearly two feet apart vertically and the bars
were not set close together. Once outside, he motioned to Robert to
follow him, while he detached the prostrate man's keys from his girdle,
dabbing his nose now and then with the sponge. Squeezing them tightly so
as to avoid clanking, he coolly selected one of the largest.
"That comes of watching Longlegs w'en the others were 'ollering," he
whispered to Robert, holding up his prize. It was the key to the door at
the blind end of the corridor, which a turnkey passing through with the
intention of going out into the yard would naturally select from his
bunch and carry separate. Hawkins' habit of swinging his keys
nonchalantly had not escaped Dobbs' observant eyes.
"Now," whispered Dobbs, making for the blind end of the corridor. There
was no time to remove the lantern and the chloroformed turnkey from
sight. Most of the convicts were still asleep, but two or three,
awakened by the noises, started up in their night clothes and stood
behind the bars, making gestures but uttering no sound.
Thus far Dobbs' plan had proved successful. There was no other outlet
than the one he had chosen, since the cells were backed against the
middle of the bastile and were impregnable at the rear. There remained
two strong doors in the opposite wall to force. One turn of the key in
its wards slipped the lock of the first. Before the second Dobbs waited
and listened. A rhythm of receding footsteps was heard outside.
Suddenly they seemed to cease.
"He's turned the corner," whispered the cracksman, immediately opening
the outer door.
"Pull the inside one to, me boy."
Robert did as he commanded.
"Out with you now."
Robert preceded his confederate into the deserted yard, while Dobbs
closed the great outer gate softly and sprung its iron bolt. Pursuit
from within was thus cut off.
"Now run, me boy."
Robert followed, easily keeping up with his leader. As they approached
the end of the bastile, Dobbs slowed his pace.
"Tiptoes, now," he cried stealthily working his way up to the corner of
the building, where he stood crouching as if in ambush. Their shadows
were thrown forward beyond the corner, so that the cracksman could not
get within a yard of the edge.
"The hother cove Hi greased, but this one we'll 'ave to sponge, Bobbs,"
he said, taking the sponge from his breast and sprinkling it anew from a
tiny vial.
"'Ere ee comes a-waggin' of 'is 'ead, but this at 'is beak will set 'im
snoozin', Hi fawncy."
The footsteps came nearer and nearer, as monotonously regular as the
ticking of a clock, but slow and heavy, as if the sentinel were a man of
size. Dobbs stood ready to spring, the sponge in his right hand, his
left free to disarm the deputy if he should present his gun. The form of
a man turned the angle. It was Koerber, the giant, whom Col. Mainwaring
had transferred from the caneshop to this less responsible duty.
Luckily Dobbs caught him in the midst of a capacious gape, and the great
sponge stuffed into his open mouth served at once as gag and smothering
instrument.
"'Old 'is harm," cried Dobbs to Robert, who leaped to his side and held
down the powerful right arm of the German Titan. Koerber kicked and
fought with desperation, bruising each of his assailants, but the
sponge muffled his outcries and gradually he sunk in a stupor, Dobbs,
with a strength no one would have suspected, breaking the fall of his
body and laying him gently on the ground.
Another long application of the sponge and again he sped away. Koerber's
beat stopped at the middle of the end-section of the yard, where he and
the other sentinel must have met and saluted. But no one had come to his
aid, and when the two fugitives crossed the "left yard," as it was
called, making directly for the wall, no one impeded their progress.
Eighty yards away, near the greenhouses, the back of a deputy could be
seen marching in the opposite direction. Was this the man whom Dobbs had
"greased?"
The cracksman had made a bee-line for the twenty-foot wall. How did he
hope to surmount such a barrier? It was as smooth as a planed board,
with hardly crevice enough at the cemented seams to give a cat's claw
footing.
"Ere's a hinstrument of my hown inventing which I call the 'andy 'inge,"
said Dobbs, removing from his bosom an iron thing coiled around with
rope. Unreeling the rope with lightning twists, he displayed for a
second a plain, strong hinge, very broadplated and sharp at the inner
angle. With a cast that no professional angler could excel, he flung
this far over the top of the wall, and drew it taut, by means of the
rope. The edges of the wall being drilled off perfectly square, the
hinge must have caught on the other side, and the security of the
apparatus as a means of ascent was only limited by the strength of the
rope. The device was as simple, yet as ingenious, as the clock-face.
"Climb, me boy," said Dobbs.
Robert was up in a few seconds, the rope being thick enough to give his
hands good purchase, and the cool night air and exhilaration buoying his
strength. Dobbs climbed with more difficulty and was puffing heavily
when, with Robert's help, he reached the broad top of the wall.
"Hi'll 'ave you gazetted hensign in the royal navy, Bobbs, next time Hi
confab with 'er royal 'ighness," he smiled, his humor never appearing to
desert him. "Such climbing would do credit to a powder monkey."
Just then, with the two figures standing on the top of the wall, a loud
clang smote the silent air. It was followed by another and another till
the world seemed awake once more.
"The alarm bell!" cried Dobbs. "They're after us! Drop!"
Both men were on the ground in a second, Dobbs coiling his "handy hinge"
as he led the way running. Fear lent him wings and though he panted and
his voice grew husky, he managed to keep abreast of his fleeter
companion. The prison wall skirted a long, ill-lighted alley, which
debouched in an unfrequented street. Here the houses were scattered,
barren lots intervening, and a glimpse of the river breaking into the
background now and then. It was broad moonlight, and the trees and
fences afforded little shelter to the runaways.
Any policeman who met them would have been justified in shooting down
two men, one in convict garb, fleeing from the direction of the prison.
Doubtless Dobbs had prepared himself for this emergency, but luck
favored him here and his reserve resources were not called into play. To
left and right and left again he turned, finally climbing a low fence
and crossing a stableyard that bordered on the river. A second fence to
climb and Robert found himself on the rocky embankment of the stream.
How dark and beautiful it was in the moonlight! "Free, and I know not
another as infinite word"--the line of the poet came back to him, and
for an instant he felt in his veins all the glory of that treasure for
which nations have thought rivers of their purest blood no extravagant
price. But there was little leisure now for meditation. The alarm bell
could still be heard sounding distinctly at the distance of a quarter of
a mile and Dobbs was peering down the embankment, which cast an inky
pall over the water in its shadow.
Presently he whistled. An answer came, some fifty yards to the right.
Clutching his comrade's arm, the Englishman ran along the bank to the
spot from which the response proceeded. A light keel-boat with a single
occupant was moored in the gloom below, but so far below that to jump
would surely capsize her, for the tide was at its ebb and the stream had
sunk like an emptying canal lock.
"Shall we plunge in?" asked Robert, not averse to the bracing midnight
bath.
"'Ardly, with a four-mile row in wet clothes before us, me hangel,"
answered the cracksman, "and the 'andy 'inge still lovingly clasped to
my bosom."
Scooping out some earth at the rim of the flags which crowned the
embankment wall, he made a hollow for the hinge and threw the rope down
into the boat. The corner to which it clung had not been chiseled off
clean like the edge of the prison wall and there was some chance of its
slipping, but the risk had to be run.
This time Dobbs descended first. Robert followed him nimbly. All through
the adventure he had reflected and even echoed the cracksman's humorous
mood, and had displayed as little nervousness as if it were a student's
lark upon which he was engaged instead of the grave crime of prison
breach. So when the hinge slipped, just as he was dangling midway, and
he fell plump into Dobbs' arm, with a coil of rope and an iron implement
behind him, he only laughed as delightedly as a high-perched tomboy
after climbing a forbidden fence.
"Well, that gives us back the hinge," he said. "We might have had to
leave it."
Evidently the serious-talking young radical had a vein of drollery under
his thoughtful exterior.
"You didn't 'urt yourself?" asked Dobbs, gathering his own dispersed
members together.
"Not a bit. You're as good as a feather bed. I'd just enjoy tumbling on
you four or five times a day."
But Dobbs, ruefully rubbing his barked shins, only ordered the boatman
to "give way," which is nautical for "pull straight ahead," and in three
or four strokes they were clear of the embankment and out in the full
current of the flowing tide.